What You Wish For (yaoi)
by Aletta
Summary: Where Aletta Likes to Think Heero Was Going At The End of Endless Waltz. =D Warning: This fanfic contains YAOI. If the thought of boys getting snuggly with other boys turns your stomach, save us both the trouble and go no further.


What You Wish For

What You Wish For

Watch what you wish for. You might get it.

I wished for peace. I would have died for it at any time, and without a second thought. I almost did, a few times. That I survived was a disappointment. I wanted to die for peace; I didn't think there could be peace in my lifetime. How could there be? I can't help being what I am, and what I am is a war machine, albeit one that lives, and breaths, and has emotions, buried somewhere beneath the soldier's iron clad conditioning. How can there be peace when such a thing—person?—as me exists? Weapons exist to be used. As long as there are weapons, there will be war. History has proven it time and again. Logically, then, as long as I lived, I would see war. I am a weapon, though a weapon that dreams, in it's heart of hearts, of peace.

Except now we have peace, and all the other weapons are gone. It was easy as long as Wing Zero was there—I had to protect the Gundam, to prevent it from being used by those wanted to start another war. But Wing's gone now, destroyed to protect the peace we fought for, and for the first time I find myself trying to truly cope with the world as I helped to make it.

I don't know what to be now, or how to be it. The world that I knew was destroyed. I helped destroy it, and I was glad. Yet I don't know how to live in this new world.

I don't know how to live in peace.

Relena would have shown me, gladly. I couldn't accept that help. I wonder what she'll think when she goes backstage, after her speech, and doesn't see me there?

I wonder why I walked away.

No, I don't have to wonder. I walked away because she loves me. That annoying, brave, headstrong girl actually loves me, a killer. Her 'fallen prince'. I can't love her back the way she wants me to, though I care about her. I thought I might love her, for a time. I'd forgotten what it feels like to actually place value on the life of another human being. Considering the fact that I didn't even give my own life value, the feeling took me by surprise…especially when all I really wanted to do early on was kill her, as my training demanded.

Yet I can't love her. I care deeply for her, as my friend. I would have died for her, as a representation of the peace that I desired—I still would. Nearly did.

It's not that she's not pretty enough. She's a lovely girl, and she'll be a beautiful woman, some day. I can recognize that she is beautiful, but I don't feel anything when I do.

Not I like I do when I look at him.

Duo Maxwell is another individual that I seriously considered killing on several occasions, if for no other reason than because he talks too damn much. Yet I didn't kill him, either, and he too I came to value more than my own life.

That seems to be some sort of a trend with me.

I thought for a while Duo might be forming some sort of an attachment to me. I discouraged it. I didn't think I'd survive the war, and I wasn't sure what I felt for Relena.

I wasn't sure I was feeling, for that matter. I wasn't supposed to. If Relena taught me to value the lives of others, Duo taught me how to feel again, just by his sheer persistence in attempting to make me act like something other than what I thought I was. I responded at first to his attempts to make conversation with me just to make him shut up. I'm not sure when I started talking to him because I enjoyed it.

I'm not sure when I started to regret that I had rebuffed his tentative attempts to form some sort of a romantic tie with me.

I'm not sure when I realized I loved him.

I didn't say anything, of course. He thinks I love her. And to be fair, I suspect he might be in love with Hilde. Certainly I know she's with him, now, as I heard her voice in the background the last time he contacted me. I don't know in what context they're together.

But I'm going to find out.

"Whatcha doing here, Heero?" Duo asks me, his violet eyes confused as he hops off the scrap metal heap he's been sorting through, looking for usable bits and pieces to salvage. Duo is nothing if not resourceful. "Relena called looking for you last night. She was really upset, man. Why'd you go off like that without even _telling_ her?"

I shrug slightly. "I don't want to discuss it."

"You two get into a lover's quarrel or somethin'?" Duo has that smile again, that big one he wears when he's teasing me about Relena.

"Impossible, as we're not lovers." I reply. I watch his face for a reaction to that. I see a flicker of some response, but I can't decipher it. Duo can be very, very good at hiding what he feels, when he wishes, and I have never been good at reading people.

"Oh." He replies. "Well. You're welcome to stay with us, if you want, but you'll have to take the floor. There's only one bedroom and it's occupied."

My heart aches. "You've been happy together?" I don't know whether I want him to say yes or not. I want him to be happy, of course, and if Hilde is making him happy, well…I want him to be happy. But part of me wants him to tell me he's not happy with her, wants to hear him tell me I have a chance.

Duo laughs. "Happy? Have you ever tried living with a woman? They're _maddening_ creatures, Heero. That's like asking if I'm happy living with someone that exists only to yell at me for leaving the toilet seat up. Geez, I don't know why she can't _check_ before she sits down, how long does it take to _look_?"

That's no answer at all. I wonder if he knows that. "We need to talk." I say briskly.

"How's about over dinner? It's late, I'm starved."

Duo is always starved. I suspect it might be a holdover from being constantly hungry as a child. "All right."

"Great!" He grins. "You're buying!" he runs off towards the car I've rented before I can say anything to refute the idea.

I sigh, and follow him.

Duo talks nonstop, and still manages to eat twice as much as me in half the time. This is partially because I'm not saying much, even for me, and partly because I'm eating slowly. I'm so nervous that my stomach is attempting to contort itself as I stare down at my plate and listen to Duo babble about the weather (not that there's much on a colony), his work, what he hopes to do in the future…and Hilde. Hilde is wonderful, a darling, a dream…my heart has sunken to the vicinity of my ankles.

Then he asks why I left Relena.

"She loves me." I reply, not looking up.

"And you love her." Duo says. "So why did you go? I know you've got problems—hell, the end of the war has been hard on all of us, not just Wu Fei--but you can't possibly expect to get through this alone, without the one you love."

I never realized how accurate the word 'heartbreak' really is. I'd always thought it was melodramatic nonsense, but now I see that it's very accurate. My heart does indeed feel like it's being ripped into shreds. A pity. I'd only so very recently learned I still had it.

"I know I can't." Is all I say.

"Then why did you go?" Duo's voice holds a hint of desperation.

"Because she loves me, and I don't love her." I say, standing up and pushing in my chair. I drop a large bill on the table, more than enough to cover our meal and the tip. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, Duo." I say flatly to Duo's feet, before I turn and leave.

I'm shaking slightly, and I feel like I'm going to be ill. I wish Dr. J was here to see this. Hitting him in the face with the fact that he didn't entirely succeed with untraining my emotions would almost be worth feeling like I want to just curl up in the middle of the street and die. I just walk off into the dusk, and I don't care particularly where it is my feet take me. What does it matter? I wanted to know whether or not there was still a chance, and now I know: there isn't.

Watch what you wish for.

"Heero!"

I stop, and turn to face him as he comes running up after me. "Yes?"

Duo stares at me intensely through the fading light. "What did you say?"

"I'm sorry to have bothered you."

Duo shook his head. "Before that." 

"I don't love Relena." I repeat. Now I know how she feels. It's justice, as I suppose WuFei would call it.

"That's what I thought you said." Duo said, nodding to himself as he tries to catch his breath, almost doubled over with his hands on his knees and his eyes closed.

I watch him for a moment. "You know, you should keep up the cardio work." I remark dispassionately. "You used to be able to sprint three times that distance without panting."

He smiles slightly up at me. "That was with my adrenaline going at full throttle. I'm not used to sprinting cold turkey after a large meal, and you walk too damned fast."

I think about that. "Cold turkeys don't sprint." I remark. This banter of ours hurts me. Seeing him there in the dying light, his braid over his shoulder, his eyes closed, and his face flushed with effort, is killing me.

I want to brush those strands of hair out of his face. I want to pull him up and hold him against me. I want to…

I kill the thought before it even has a chance to begin.

He laughs a bit. "No, I suppose they don't. Heero…why did you come to see me?"

"I….." I try to think of an excuse. I'm failing. I didn't expect him to ask that. "I…I…"

He opens his eyes and watches me intensely while I grope about uselessly for words. I settle on telling him the a bit of the truth. "I wanted to see you."

"No shit. Why?" Duo watches me stand there silently for a moment before going on. "I didn't expect this out of you, Heero. I was shocked when Relena called and told me you'd left. I was half convinced you'd gone and jumped off another cliff."

"I didn't jump off a cliff. I jumped out of a _building_, which happened to be on a cliff." I correct automatically. "And it was _your_ idea and _your_ rescue."

"Whatever. Heero…I…" he began, then just stopped.

I never thought I would see Duo speechless. "You should go back to Hilde. It's late, and you didn't call her. I imagine she's quite worried about you." I say briskly. "You have someone you love, who loves you. Don't risk it, Duo." It's a precious and valuable thing, I think. What good is peace if you're alone and miserable like this?

Duo shakes his head. "I'm not." He says. "That's what I'm trying to find out."

I frown. "You don't make sense."

"Do you love me?" Duo asks.

I feel like somebody's just dumped a bucket of ice water over me. "What?"

"Do you love me?" He repeats. "Just tell, me, Heero, please, one way or the other. Do you love me?"

I want to tell him no, to salvage my pride. But the way he's looking at me, with those dark violet eyes... "Yes." I whisper, before I can stop myself.

"That's why you left her?"

"I was never with her." I reply. "I couldn't have been. I care about Relena. I love her, I suppose. But I'm not in love with her. Not the way she wants me to be. I can't be." I close my eyes. "I love you, and I had to find out if there was still a chance for us. I knew you were with Hilde…but I had to know…" I open my eyes and pull myself up straighter. "I found out what I came to. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"Look, would you stop repeating that over and over?" Duo demands. "I'm not with Hilde."

"But…" My mind is having difficulty processing that bit of information. "But…you…"

"Sure, I'm staying with her. I didn't know where else to go, and to be fair, I didn't care either. Hilde's been a lifesaver; she helped put me back together, after the Mariemaia war…after you left with Relena."

"Duo…" I try to interject. No chance. When Duo gets going, there's no stopping him.

"For crying out loud, Heero, I sleep on the _couch_. Hilde and her girlfriend've got the bedroom."

I'm confused. "I didn't think Hilde was homosexual." I manage to interject.

"I didn't think you were, either." Duo replies. "Though technically she's not; she likes men too, just women more. We're friends, Heero, just very good ones. I wouldn't have gone to somebody who I thought might be interested in me to help me put the pieces of my broken heart back together, that'd be cruel."

I try to put all of this together, but I'm terrified to. "Duo…"

He does it for me. "I love you." Duo says. "I always have. Well, not always, I suppose, but for more than long enough. I just thought…you loved…_her_. And I didn't want to get in the way of that. People I love have this bad habit of ending up dead, anyway, but…after the war…I thought…maybe…it could be different…but you went off with _her_, so I thought not, and I…"

I know by the slightly frantic tone in his voice that he'll keep going for quite a while if I don't shut him up. I cup his face between my hands, and kiss him, quick and hard, my hands shaking. He responds to it fast enough, covering my hands with his own, and kissing me back fiercely.

It's like all the little broken bits just suddenly snap back into place, like a shattered bone abruptly set and healed all at once, without pain. I close my eyes and kiss him a bit deeper, shivering as he strokes my hands. We stay like that for a long moment, frozen, as cars drive by on the nearby roads (a few honk their horns appreciatively), and the colony grows ever darker, preparing for it's night cycle. We break the kiss, and Duo stares at me, as if he expects me to vanish at any moment.

I know the feeling. I'm not entirely sure this isn't a dream.

"Why didn't you say something?" I ask, my fingers tracing the curves of Duo's face, stroking smooth skin over fine bones.

"You rejected me once, and I thought—everyone thought—you were with Relena." Duo replies, his fingers tightening around mine. "I didn't want to interfere with that. I thought she was making you happy, and I wanted you to be happy, even without me."

"Hmph." I smile a bit, chuckling to myself. That sounds familiar.

Duo smiles a bit. "I didn't know what to think when she called to say you'd just vanished." His voice grows shaky. "Half of me was convinced you'd just cracked and done something drastic and irreversible. I knew you were taking it hard, trying to redefine yourself in peace."

I run a fingertip over his lips. "And the other half?"

Duo grins. "Oh, part of me figured you'd wised up and realized that living with Relena was going to drive you batty. Another reasoned that you two had quarreled…either way, I was hoping you would come to me, though I didn't actually expect you to. I figured it was best to play it cool when you showed up. I didn't want to freak you out by grabbing you and sobbing on your shoulder that I'd missed you, and I loved you, and I needed you with me forever."

"Watch what you wish for." I kiss Duo again. He slides his hands into my hair and closes his eyes…and then I'm not quite sure how, but I lose control of the situation, as his tongue slides teasingly over the roof of my mouth, and his hands run firmly through my hair. I groan as he shifts his focus and brushes his lips against my cheek, then down the side of my neck, his hands sliding around my waist and holding me tightly against him. "You might get it." I manage to finish, shivering.

"Then I'll wish for it." Duo whispers, as I wrap my arms around him and close my eyes as he slides his hands inside my shirt, to stroke up the bare skin of my back. "Because I'll get it. After all, I got you."

I smile, and hold him tighter. "It's enough…."

FIN


End file.
